1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an apparatus and method for virtual desktop service.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, there has been a lot of research into and standardization of virtual desktop service, which is service for providing a hard disk for data storage, applications, or the like to an Internet space.
Korean Patent Application Publication Nos. 2010-0123847 and 2009-0111576 disclose virtual desktop service technology in detail. However, architecture for such virtual desktop service has not yet been standardized, and thus there is a limitation in that virtual desktop service cannot be efficiently provided to a user.
Virtual desktop service, which is service in which a hard disk for storing data, application programs, etc. are provided to an Internet space, enables a virtual machine running on a virtual desktop server to be used by connecting the virtual machine to a client system.
When a conventional virtual desktop is provided, there are various schemes, such as a scheme in which Microsoft (MS) provides terminal service called Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) using a Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), a scheme in which Linux provides terminal service called Virtual Network Computing (VNC) using a Remote Framebuffer (RFB) protocol, and a scheme in which Teradici provides a terminal service solution using a protocol called PC-over-IP (PCoIP).
To perform virtual desktop service using such a conventional scheme, a virtual desktop function must be provided to each user. In order to provide this function, devices (e.g. a Central Processing Unit (CPU), memory, a Hard Disk Drive (HDD), a Universal Serial Bus (USB) device, etc.) corresponding to each user must be allocated to that user, and an OS image for each user must also be allocated.
As public tools for providing such a function, virt-tool, virt-manager, etc. are present. Virtual machines for users may be made and created using a program, such as Citrix XenDesktop, VMware Fusion or Workstation. However, those conventional schemes are disadvantageous in that the user must personally run exclusive software using the OS of a client system, and thus those schemes are not suitable for the provision of real-time virtual service.
In addition, in order to provide the above-described real-time virtual service, the user must access a virtualized desktop environment over the Internet or a Local Area Network (LAN). When a client terminal accesses a virtual desktop using a virtual desktop client program, the network load between a server for providing virtual desktop service (hereinafter also referred to as a “central server” or “provision server”) and the client terminal and the CPU load on the server for providing the virtual desktop service may vary depending on the types of tasks executed on the virtual desktop.